3 Most Shocking Marketing Campaigns

Controversy creates cash. It may annoy a few people along the way, but it’s always been a successful way of generating publicity. Sometimes the most shocking marketing campaigns can backfire, though. You need to strike the right balance between offending enough people for notoriety and not offending too many people that it just creates a storm that engulfs your company.

Remember that most content will offend someone somewhere, but companies have been known to go completely over the line when it comes to their attempts to shock. These are the most shocking marketing campaigns of recent times.

Carl’s Jr. is one of those companies that are well-known for their racy ads. The 2015 Super Bowl was no exception. This time around Carl’s Jr. was promoting one of its burgers. Charlotte McKinney was the star of this commercial and appeared almost completely naked.

Predictably, people started to cry about sexism and objectification of women. One study saw 52% of viewers claim the ad was offensive.

And this was exactly what the company wanted. Andrew Puzder, the CEO of the company, said that if his ads aren’t offensive he asks the marketing department what went wrong. He says that sales remain high and these ads are clearly working, so he sees no reason to change them.

Every Super Bowl brings a spate of ads that are designed to offend. GoDaddy, once again, attempted to upset and offend in the 2015 version of the Super Bowl.

This ad sees a lost puppy reuniting with his owner. The owner then takes the puppy and ships it away through selling it on the GoDaddy website. This instantly upset the Internet as people took to the Internet to criticize the commercial. On this occasion, the company realized that it had gone too far and it pulled the ad.

The reason for this was that commentators from across the country got involved to criticize the ad. The company decided that it would cause so much controversy that it would lead to the company losing sales, as opposed to gaining them. It pulled the ad completely and it never aired.

The Movement for Self-Esteem campaign is a movement created by Dove in an attempt to make women feel better about themselves. It has garnered some controversy in its time due to its implication that women need to break free in the first place. But the overall campaign has been a huge success.

Part of this movement was the Choose Beautiful campaign. In the ad, women from different cities walked through a door that was labeled either beautiful or average. Most women picked the average door, before they then chose to be confident and opted for the beautiful door.

So why did this upset some people?

While some people saw it as a lesson in female empowerment, the outrage brigade arrived to criticize it for being patronizing. But the mark of a great marketing campaign is that it starts a dialogue. And this is exactly what it caused because Twitter exchanges and Facebook feeds blew up. It even caused one Buzzfeed editor to resign.

When Is Controversy Good And When is it Bad?

It’s easy to look at controversy and see it as either black or white. But controversy can have many different shades of gray. Sometimes it can spark a dialogue, but it can destroy your online reputation in the process. Simply opting for the most offensive thing you can won’t necessarily lead to success.

You have to strike the balance between offending people and not offending too many of your loyal customers to promote your service on the Internet. What these three ad campaigns managed to do is that they offended those who weren’t going to buy anything from them anyway. In the most brutal way possible, they never cared about these people.

Their loyal customers continued to buy from them, and at the same time, they reached a new audience. It had a huge effect on their sales, and it’s why these companies have attempted to court controversy again and again.

Controversy really can sell.

AJ Agrawal is an entrepreneur and marketer who helps venture backed startups and Fortune 500 companies optimize their growth channels.